Metaphorical Musings - Steere on Le Guin

Elisabeth Le Guin’s “A Visit to the Salon de Parnasse” is an artful reconstruction of the thoughts and writings of several individuals into a coherent and engaging conversation concerning the art of making music. The central construct of this discussion revolves around the metaphor of music to conversation. Le Guin and her collective company display within their discussion the application of rhetorical terminology to the art of music, as Burkholder suggests was common amongst Eighteenth-century theorists in A History of Western Music (482). Musical terms such as “phrase” and “period” were derived from their counterparts in rhetoric (482). In deciphering and dissecting Haydn’s composition, the people gathered in Le Guin’s creative essay extend the rhetorical metaphor further.

First, Diderot and Morellet describe the separation of performer and audience (common in the modern era, but an anomaly in their own) as “orational” or “dramatic” (Le Guin 18). In describing the music of the Eighteenth-century salon, the word “conversation” is applied. Yet what is intriguing about the following discourse is the cycle of comparison and exception. Music is compared to a conversation, but it has a predetermined structure and subject, so therefore music is more similar to an entretien (22). Quintilian’s description of conversation as a form of “divided” oration which maintains a light impromptu feel presupposes a prohibition of serious material (19). And yet Pezzl reasons through to another exception, saying that both conversation and a composition might address serious subjects without a contradiction of terms (20). Thus, the application of terms changes again. In continuation, the piano is metaphorically referred to as the conversational catalyst that introduces the subject and stimulates the other participants (23). And yet, in a seemingly contradictory fashion, the string instruments are later described as the grounding force (24). The cello is specifically compared to an individual who speaks sparingly but with wit and wisdom, serving the other members (32).

Le Guin and her cohorts appear to be interested not so much in a line-upon-line comparison of music to rhetoric, but rather they use the language and comprehension of rhetoric in hopes of discovering the deeper reasons behind the pleasure derived from the musical art. The pleasure of music is not found primarily in the nuts and bolts of the composition, but something more abstract (27). This abstraction necessitates the use of creative and sometimes frivolous subjective interpretations (such as Pichler’s story on page 27) that allow an individual to glimpse into the deeper recesses of meaning in a musical work. Le Guin uses rhetorical metaphor to delve into an understanding of music, but as Diderot seems to suggest on page twenty six, a metaphor can only go so far.

In the hopes of understanding music even further, let us turn the tables on the analogy. In what ways does a conversational metaphor fall short when applied to music? We have looked at the similarities, but what are some of the differences not discussed in the essay?

Discussion Questions:
1. Does music have inherent quality in and of itself, or is value measured purely by the performance of a given piece? How does the musical expertise of the observer affect the answer to this question?
2. Salon music appears to have a strong emphasis on community. How does the musical culture of the modern era continue to cultivate community, and in what ways have we abandoned this relational commitment?
3. Much of musical terminology and discussion is derived from rhetorical language. The article explores the similarities of music to conversation, but in what ways does the conversational comparison fall short? Is metaphor insufficient?
[ex. Rousseau’s qualms with music as “conversation” (22,26)]
4. The article discusses the origins of the pleasure derived from music (27). Are these origins concrete, abstract or both?
5. On page 32, Diderot compares the composer to the salonniere. In what ways does the composer regulate the “conversation”? How has the tension between “freedom and direction”(32) in musical interpretation changed?
6. The presence and prominence of women in music salons appears to have challenged and influenced gender roles in society (33). How did this reality affect women’s social standing in the bigger picture?